sensualism
- noun
- /ˈsɛnʃuəlɪzəm/
- Formal
:
sensualismo
- Critics argue that sensualism overlooks important ethical considerations by focusing only on personal pleasure.
Examples
-
Through a disdainful reaction against the mental condition of the herd, they fell back into a kind of egotism, intellectual and artistic egotism, an idealistic sensualism, where the tracked and hunted ego vindicated its rights against human fellowship.
Blog text (24) -
Yet this sensualism was regarded as just that, opposed to science and logic and to the growing individualism and control over the "natural."
Academic text (1999) -
As in Juegos, the shy, introverted, middle-class child finds in his lower-class counterparts the freedom, sensualism, and contempt for authority that his own upbringing has denied him.
Academic text (1990) -
But instead of such narrow sensualism, idealism is better understood as the broader view that reality is confined to what is experienced, where the extra compass indicated by that term comes from acknowledging the inescapably conceptual or interpretative element in all of our cognition.
Academic text (2017) -
The doctrine of sensualism claims that feelings and sensations are the sole valid basis for determining what is good.
-
In discussions about ethics, sensualism is often contrasted with rational approaches that emphasize logic and reason.
Antonyms
- Formal
3
9.4
A way of living with very strict self-control that avoids pleasure for religious or spiritual reasons
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Sensualism comes from the Latin sensus meaning 'feeling' and the ending -ism meaning 'belief' or 'doctrine'. So in philosophy sensualism is the idea that feelings or sensations are the only real basis for deciding what is good.